Who is this man, Samir Chayet?
I look in the mirror, run my fingers through my beard, my hair, down the edge of my sleeve. I stare into round brown eyes that as a child would have begged for more and never been denied. I feel my belly, a little saggy but not embarrassingly so. When I raise my eyebrows, it seems that my whole scalp rises; when I frown, it’s as if my forehead is trying to touch my nose. I lift the lid of the toilet cistern, drop my wallet and phone inside and close it.
Right now the question of who Samir Chayet is is not as important as who he seems to be.
“Are you ready for pudding?” Janus’ voice drifted through from the kitchen.
I stared at my reflection for a moment longer, and turned out the light.
“What is it?” I asked, slipping into the kitchen, but now my words were Maghrib Arabic, slow to pass and heavy to form.
Janus stood at the sink, a pair of yellow Marigolds pulled over his withered hands, suds of washing-up liquid hanging off the front of his shirt. His eyebrows rose at the sound of my voice, but in the same language with an eastern accent, he replied, “Crème caramel with a raspberry and vanilla sauce. Hand made by someone in a supermarket.”
“It sounds lovely. Shall I dry?”
A flicker of surprise in the corner of his lips. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
I picked a tea towel off its hook, lined up at Janus’ side, started methodically drying the dishes. “Ever tried making crème caramel? Yourself, I mean?” I asked, testing the words as they ran through me, remembering the shape of them, warming to my theme.
“Once. When I was a housewife in Buenos Aires. It collapsed in the pot, looked like banana puke.”
“That often happens.”
“You a chef?”
“I was, for a while.”
“Were you any good?”
“Used too much chilli. Management were disappointed that I wasn’t sticking to the style for which I had been acclaimed. I told them that it was bland and undersized. They told me to reform my ways or find a new job. I reformed my ways and found a new job.”
“Sounds unfulfilling.”
“I wanted to test a hypothesis.”
“Which was?”
“That the tongue of a chef could taste more–biologically, I mean, that there was something chemical in its capacity to taste more fully–than any other man.”
“And?” Curiosity lifted Janus’ voice, the scourer ceased for a moment in its rounds across the dishes.
“Damned if I could see what the fuss was about. I have worn some of the greatest musicians of the day and still cannot hear the sublime in Mahler. I have dressed myself in the bodies of great dancers, and certainly my muscles were flexible enough for me to stand on one leg and suck my own big toe without strain, and yet…”
“Yet?”
“I was forced to conclude that, though the body was toned to perfection, without the confidence of experience the feat for which it was honed still evaded me. It was a deep disappointment the day I realised that the lungs of an opera singer and the legs of a ballerina were not enough to achieve perfection in the form itself.”
“You didn’t want the hard work.”
“No one wants the hard work. I suppose you could say I lacked motivation.”
We worked in silence; the fire burning in the room next door, until at last he said, “I imagine running looks bad.”
“What?”
“If they’re already here, I mean.”
“Ah, yes. Running would raise a few questions.”
“So,” he went on, “you intend to bluff it out? Dress yourself as a civilian?”
“That’s the plan.”
“And you think drying the dishes will help?”
“I think that our kind never work together. I think that we are lonely. I think we want friends, that we need… companionship, more than company. I think that everyone’s afraid, but more so when we are alone. We should have that pudding now.”
“You’re in for a treat.”
I put the last dish on to the rack and drifted back into the living room as Janus emptied the fridge of its sugary confections. Two white plates of crème caramel adorned with magenta sauce were laid out for my consideration, a silver spoon beside each. I tried a sliver and was cautiously impressed. Janus sat opposite, his pudding untouched.
Then, “Did…”
I took another bite.
“Would you…” he tried again, his voice shaking round the edges. Stop. A slow breath in, a long breath out, and at last, “I think I will have that morphine now, please.”
I laid my spoon down, leaned back in the chair. “No.”
“No?”
“No. You want to die, be my guest. You want someone here to give you the strength to go through with it, an audience for your big moment–fine. You want to stop the pain, that’s an entirely different matter.”
His bones stuck up white beneath the ragged redness of his knuckles; his smile was wide, eyes narrow. “How long do you think you have left to live, Samir?”
“You took the answer out of my hands. We do that, you and I. You’re a good cook.”
“I worked hard for it. Are you not—”
His words were barely formed, the sound balanced on the edge of his tongue, when the lights went out.
There was no thunk of circuit breakers, no snap of electricity tearing itself apart. The lights were on and then they were off, and we sat together, shadows against the bright orange of the fire, the rain drumming on the window pane, the drip-drip of the kitchen tap as it emptied itself into a still-soapy sink smelling of chemical lime. I looked to where the shadow of Janus sat, back straight, neck locked, hands curled around the edge of the table.
We waited.
“Samir?”
“Yes?”
His voice shook, his hands knocked against the wood. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Not running.”
“As you said, it would have been predictable.”
The thump of a boot outside the door, the flicker of a shadow across the window pane. I thought about all the rugs on the floor, how the water would destroy them. I pushed my plate away from the edge of the table lest its contents be spilt.
“Samir?” A stammering, a heat, that might have been acid tears on a ravaged face.
“Yes?”
“Good luck.”
A metal object broke a pane of glass. I pulled my hands over my ears but still heard the flashbang roll on to the floor. I ducked beneath the table, and the light as it exploded knocked against the back of my brain. I curled up with my knees to my chin and my elbows covering my head as the front door slammed off its hinges, as heavy boots and heavy men charged in from the front, from the back, their trousers tucked into their socks, their sleeves taped around their gloves, and through the scream of my ears and the whining in my brain I half-heard Janus climb to his feet, hold his hands out wide and proclaim in cheerful bouncing English,
“I fucking love this body!”
He must have moved as he spoke, must have lunged, tried to grab, because the gunfire that ensued–a burst of silenced shots–kept going long after the body had fallen. I half-opened my eyes, and as my retinas strained to adjust to the restored gloom, I saw the pocked body of Marcel hit the floor on the other side of the table, each silenced shot a crater in his chest, one through his throat, another through his lower jaw, the final one to the head, and even as he lay there, the shooter fired and fired again, three more bursts, Marcel’s shirt popping and splattering red blood as the bullets bit in, until silence descended save for the drumming of the rain.
Then, as was inevitable, someone put a knee in the small of my back, a gun against the base of my neck, and I begged for mercy in what I hoped was my very best Maghrib Arabic.